The skies above the jagged mountain rang with the screech of Seekers in pursuit. Bumblebee’s optics darted from Slipstream’s cutting dive to Starscream’s glinting wings as they zig-zagged overhead, thrusters burning blue in the thin mountain air. The ground battle below was already chaos—Autobot defenders firing from the battered cover of the Ark’s partially buried hull, and the golden starship’s scorch-marked plates reflecting the flicker of blaster fire.

Bumblebee zigged through boulders and shrapnel, trying to keep Windblade in sight through the smoky haze. Cybertronian debris littered the ground; energon cubes spilled and lockers snapped open where the Ark’s main ramp, reinforced and partly overgrown, stood ajar behind a wall of Autobot fire. Every thunderous footfall rattled the hexagonal plating of the Ark’s floors inside—Ratchet and Wheeljack barking orders over the hum of diagnostic scanners and flickering holographs in the medbay, while the bridge’s panoramic windows cast fractured light over Optimus’s calm, commanding face.

Bee tensed his thoraxal cavity, processor running hot, spark lurching as Starscream banked into a strafing pattern. He bounding up the mountain, tires half-transformed, making a split-second decision: he’d leap off the cliff and hope Grimlock, somewhere below, would break his fall—anything to lose his pursuers.

He launched himself at full speed as the edge loomed, but at the last instant his optics registered just how far below the drop went. Wind sheer whipped at his helm as his pedes lost traction—then suddenly, before gravity could claim him, a powerful servo snared the thick cables at the back of his neck strut.

Bumblebee dangled with his bitarlueus and digita scrabbling at empty air. The grip was iron, cool against his neck plating—a Decepticon.